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Can someone guide me in the right direction? I'm trying to install a carPC and i'm trying to keep the stock headunit and relocate it to the glovebox. Can someone tell me how this can be done? What wires do i need if any?

I've done the same thing for my carPC although my HU was an aftermarket one. You will need to extend the wires for the wiring harness and extend the antenna wire as well (I bought an extension wire on ebay). Then open up the fusebox door and on the left side there will be an opening large enough to fish the wires through. Let me know if you have any questions.

I want to keep my stock headunit, mostly just to save money as i'm planning on a carPC as well, got most of the stuff ready and took apart the dash just to check things out. I'm not really familiar with how to extend those wires. Can you enlighten a fellow e46er? I'll probably have more questions about the carpc when all the parts come in so would be awesome if you could guide me in the right direction.

I have extended my head unit till the trunk, it's not that difficult. You can get a BMW iso connector that comes i.e. with bluetooth/handsfree devices and use that to extend the wiring loom instead of chopping the factory wires. How do you plan to change input source with the HU in the glovebox? It's easier to get an aftermarket headunit and split it. Throw the tuner/amp section in the first aid box for example or in the trunk and put the faceplate somewhere accessible. If you are good with molding and no smoker, you can use the space in the front ashtray, or do it my style

Additionally, if you put the HU in the trunk you will have a really short antenna cable which will massively improve reception

I'm even more confused now. I'm a complete noob with all this car audio stuff. I just plan to keep it on AUX the whole time so switching the input wouldn't matter. But i don't know how to go from the factory harness and extend the wires. Should i buy a metra harness, 70-9003. The wires from that harness can go down into the glovebox but then how do i connect them back into the radio? Ideally i wish there was some sort of extenstion harness so i wouldn't have to deal with this since i have no idea even where to start.

Paraklas- i love your set up man, i'm just not as techie as you. But awesome work man. What is the advantage of replacing the headunit?

If you retain your factory HU, all you have to do it cut each wire and solder in an extender wire. Then, as mentioned above, extend the antenna. When I was doing my carpc I bought a cheap alpine headunit to place in the glovebox.

The cheapest Alpine unit I found in the market has a more powerful amplifier (4x50w Mosfet), MP3 Input (2.5mm stereo jack), i-pod input, better reception, higher quality sound, you can hook an external amp of your choice, can work with the factory steering wheel controls (with the Alpine-BMW module), you can split the unit in 2 pieces if you want to do something more advanced (any person with some soldering skills can do it) and I guess other advantages over OEM which I can't think of right now.

I'm not a huge audio guy so I think would still want to hold on to the stock headunit. And I don't want to cut any wires. I found a metra harness that hooks up to the oem harness then it has a ton of wires sticking out of it. Can i hook up those wires into the stock cd player? If so, how? Sorry i know i sound like a complete noob but this is the last piece that im trying to figure out before i start putting my carpc in. Any stereo wiring 101 things i can take a look at?

Sorry to bump this thread but since my question is relevant... which connector/extender is it called to move the headunit to the glove? Like the OP, I don't need to change source only need aux, which means I don't need to extend the antenna/radio signal. The only thing I need to extend is the actual speaker harness (Big pack of wires). I don't want to cut because I'm not very good w/ electrical stuff so if there's an "extension cord" type of connector that has "BMW Female-to-BMW male" that would make it so much easier to extend about 12" to get to the glove compartment.

You wouldn't need to cut. When an aftermarket HU is installed, they sell this wiring harness adapter for your car. it plugs straight on to the harness on the car side, and then you would somehow splice the corresponding wires to the correct wires on the aftermarket HU.

This is what you need. a part that someone decided to cut off on the car harness side of the vehicle and sell it for $20. Buy the aftermarket HU wiring harness as well. Connect the aftermarket harness to original Car harness. Eventually you will need to do some soldering or use wire connectors with more wiring to extend it to where you want it to be, solder or wire connectors again to that cut off radio harness, then plug that right into the back of the stock radio. a lot of work for a piece of **** HU

FYI, here are the modifications that I had to make to the glovebox in order to make my stereo fit.

I cut a large square hole on the left size where the adapter plugs into the stereo. There is quite a bit of webbing stuff on the back of the glovebox to cut through, but there is no need to make the hole too much bigger than the adapter.

On the right side, I cut a hole for the antenna extension cable (FAKRA cable) to go through. Again, just big enough for the cable to fit through.

In the middle, you'll see that I drilled a small hole where the bolt on the back of the stereo sticks out. You can unscrew that black cap off the bolt, but I don't think you can unscrew the bolt from the stereo. You could probably cut it off, but my goal was to have a fully reversible install so I left the bold and just drilled the hole.

I had some hesitation at first cutting into the glovebox, but I'm glad I decided to move the stereo there. If I ever reversed the install (which I won't), I think I could easily cover those holes with a black board or piece of plastic.